In recent years, demand for a rear projection is becoming increasingly strong as a suitable display for a monitor for a home theater, a large screen television, or the like.
In a transmission screen used for the rear projection, a lenticular lens substrate is in general use. However, this type of screen has a problem that the vertical angle of view thereof is small although the lateral angle of view thereof is large (namely, there is a bias in the angles of view).
As a solution to such a problem, there has been proposed a transmission screen which uses a microlens array sheet (microlens substrate) in place of the lenticular lens substrate and includes a black matrix provided at an emission face side of the microlens array sheet and a light diffusion layer provided on the whole area of the microlens array sheet at the emission faceside (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2003-177476). In such a transmission screen, with the purpose of improvement on a high-contrast and high-resolution image by avoiding occurrence of moire or scintillation, the transmission screen is designed so that light entering each of the microlenses is focused at the incident face side of the black matrix short of each of openings that are formed in the black matrix. In this transmission screen, the horizontal angle of view and vertical angle of view thereof are controlled by the microlenses arranged in a matrix, and the incident light is diffused by the light diffusion layer. This makes it possible to enlarge the angles of view of the transmission screen.
However, in such a transmission screen, since the light (photons) entering the light diffusion layer collides with the diffusion media frequently, the light (photons) entering the light diffusion layer is reflected by the light diffusion layer and returns to the back face side (that is, incident face side) thereof easily. Further, this makes the degree of extinction due to the collision with the diffusion media or the like enlarge. Thus, there is a problem that light use efficiency of the transmission screen becomes low.